Why You Should Live with Your Significant Other Whether You Want To or Not

In Baltimore, love can save you money. In fact, a casual sort of fondness can save you money if you think you can make it last the entire length of a lease.

Trulia.com computed what they call the “Shacking-Up Discount” — how much money you save trading in two 1-bedroom apartments for one two-bedroom apartment. In Baltimore, you save 38 percent in rent, a little higher than the national average. Then you can each keep a bedroom to yourself (!); or, if he or she doesn’t snore, you can share a bed and fight over who gets to turn the unused room into an office, yoga studio, craft room, place to store you collection of antique pie birds, or whatever.

That’s all well and good, but what’s really interesting is that you still enjoy a shacking-up discount — of 22 percent –when you trade in your two 1-bedroom apartments for one 3-bedroom apartment. Which is great because not only will you have places to put your new foosball table and your new drum set, but given what you’re saving in rent every month, they’ll practically pay for themselves!